The brain has a marvellous way of keeping us safe when exposed to high stress and trauma. When police employees find themselves dealing with some of the most traumatic and ‘griefy’ situations, their training will usually kick in enabling them to get on with the job in hand, professionally and methodically at the time. On occasion though, reactions during or after the exposure to highly stressful or potentially traumatic events can impact on an inherently deep level which can be either noticeable or unnoticeable to others.
You’ve heard of ‘fight or flight’ – the brain’s lightening quick process of preparing the body to respond to the perceived dangers in our environment. When this happens, the body is flooded with adrenaline and any one of us might experience a pull to flee and get out of harm’s way. As a police officer, you would have to resist this urge and use the adrenaline to rush toward potential danger and/or stay to deal with the situation.
Freeze can also happen. I’ve sat with officers many times who have been shocked, embarrassed and upset by a reaction they experienced when being confronted with a potentially traumatic scene. The ‘freeze’ response may have only been a few seconds or less than a minute (for some longer) but has caused all sorts of issues. Imagine being in a position where the training does not kick in immediately. You feel overwhelmed by the demand being placed on you to ‘deal’ or ‘fix’ what is going on. The public’s expectation can be high, but so can your colleagues’ expectation of you. You are expected to have one another’s backs. However, you are also human and when exposed to potentially traumatic events, the brain will react within 0.4 second and occasionally you may not react initially how you would like to.
The key to recovery from events that are rather unpleasant, upsetting and at times downright horrific is in the emotional and psychological processing after the event. If something you have dealt with is potentially traumatic, your brain generally needs about three days to process what has happened. It is amazing how quickly you can go from experiencing intense emotions and maybe feeling a little bit, well, not your normal self and then suddenly feeling so much better and back to ‘normal’…your normal – whatever that may be! There may be other times, more rarely, that you don’t feel quite yourself for about four to six weeks or longer for some.
Hopefully if you are a police employee reading this, you are in a service that provides support for situations such as this. In the police service I work for, they have TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) which is a peer based risk management process which captures officers and staff who are vulnerable for developing longer term mental health issues and ensuring they receive psychological support, such as counselling, to get them back on track. Predominantly however, TRiM encourages peer support and provides gentle psycho education that enables officers and staff to feel reassured that what they are experiencing is normal.
TIME to process trauma without being exposed to any other workplace potentially traumatic events is achieved only in an ‘ideal world’ it seems. However, time to decompress, allowing our natural psychological healing to be uninterrupted is not easily achieved across many forces due to resources not quite meeting the demand. That is not to say that time isn’t being offered by managers who are all too aware of the effects of unprocessed trauma, however colleagues can be overwhelmed by the sense of not wanting to let their team mates down, suppressing their own need for self care.
Good supervision and leadership is key. It is important that officers and staff have their experiences acknowledged with the all important check-in. The words “How are you doing?” (ask more than once if you you get the automatic “I’m fine” response to allow further opportunity for opening up a supportive conversation), “Let’s go and have a cuppa” and “How can I help?” need to be uttered more. Lone and remote working are challenges that we need to overcome to ensure access to basic peer and supervisor support.
Anyway, I’m going off track a bit. Good leadership is a whole other blog!
There are four main characteristics about potentially traumatic events in policing, and for emergency services generally, which can cause issues in processing for all of us. Let’s look at them in a little detail:
- Dislocated expectation
You know those moments when you are caught off guard and you absolutely did not see ‘that’ coming? Dislocated expectation is when something very different occurs to what you were expecting and the stress response (fight, flight, freeze) is induced.
An example of this is from an experienced police officer that I work with in a training setting, who I shall call Pete for the purpose of this blog. Several years ago, as a young probationer constable, he responded to a call from a local resident who stated there was someone in his front garden lying on the grass, not moving. Expectations were that this was likely to be one of the local homeless gentlemen in the area who were often found drunk and worse for wear in residents gardens.
When Pete arrived at the address, he was not prepared at all for what he found. The scene was chaotic – members of the public milling around in shock and others in distress. Pete immediately saw a paramedic who had reached the scene before him, beckoning him to the garden. Once the ever-increasing crowd of neighbours and on-lookers parted to let Pete through, he immediately saw the body of a young lady, who had clearly been murdered.
So there you have it, complete dislocated expectation. Pete thought he was going to be moving along one of the local regular ‘customers’ and was faced with something completely unexpected…but not just unexpected – horrific in nature. Despite doing a very good job at the scene to contain the situation and wait for back up, Pete’s brain would not have prepared him for what he found as effectively as that if he knew he was attending the scene where someone appeared to have been seriously injured or killed. Mental preparation and going through the motions of considering possible actions on arrival are completely normal but of course, whilst you may be trained to expect the unexpected, in reality the information you have to hand would normally be what you actively prepare for.
Pete did experience some shock and acute stress reactions following this incident, including dreams, unsettled sleep and not being able to lie in bed in a certain position, reminding him of the victim at the scene. He also worried that he looked bemused and shocked initially at the scene to members of the public and the paramedic. This may have been reduced had he have known more detail before attending.
- Pattern Matching
There are times when you can walk into an environment and something about it triggers a stress response from a memory of something previously traumatic or highly stressful. There will always be one event, or maybe more as a police officer that you can instantly recall as being difficult, upsetting or horrific in nature. It doesn’t mean to say that you will have flashbacks forever more and sleepless nights remembering the detail, but sights, sounds, touch and smells can remind us of those events and cause a ‘pattern match’.
How you deal with this memory recall once you are conscious of it however, is within your control. A simple acknowledgement of “Oh yes, I know what that sound reminded me of” might be enough to calm yourself to get on with the job at hand. Being able to ground yourself is important – remember the brain is trying to keep you safe and you are often in situations, unlike members of the public, where it can be tentative. If you are reminded of something that happened in the past during the here and now then this is the brain’s emotional memory kicking in, in an attempt to warn you of potential danger. However, the environment in the present may be completely safe – this is the time to talk constructively to yourself; offering reassurance that you are okay and you are just reacting to a past event. Focussing on settling your breathing is a good way of grounding, making your exhale slightly longer than your inhale.
Sounds and smells are particularly strong from a sensory memory perspective. Most of us will know what it’s like to associate certain perfume scents with people in our lives or a song that comes on the radio which transports us back to a particular time or relationship. Sadly I have seen more than one officer over the years that has avoided barbecues due to the worry that the smell will trigger certain reactions. Another common one is not being able to eat rice or spaghetti for a short time or for a very long time. These are the types of reactions that are not widely spoken about but subtly lead to avoidance tactics and adaptations which can be difficult for loved ones to manage as well.
- Personalisation
When we move from place to place, we subconsciously home in on those things that are familiar to us or remind us of something from our personal lives, past or present. This could be the make/model of a vehicle, an item of clothing, a particular picture frame, a name on a tv programme – absolutely anything! So it stands to reason that this would happen during stressful or potentially traumatic circumstances as well.
Many of us have heard stories of emergency service personnel responding to tragedies and being more distressed by an abandoned ringing mobile phone with ‘Mum’ calling someone who will never again be able to answer their call, a discarded wallet with photos of smiling children or a love note inside, than the lifeless body itself. These items are what can make us relate to a person and instantly personalise our own circumstances and ponder our own mortality. There is nothing like other people’s grief to induce our own experiences of loss and many officers and police staff can imagine the ‘what if’ scenario…”What would happen if that were me/my daughter/my partner/my brother?”
Personalisation can occur in many forms – a person, a situation, an object, absolutely anything that prompts familiarity to you and your life or memories.
Top Tip: It’s not hard for things to end up on the news or social media very quickly these days and it can be a shock or bring on strong emotions when you are confronted with a smiley, happy image of a victim, particularly someone who has died or been seriously injured in traumatic circumstances with you having been involved as a first responder, part of the investigation team or other involvement with the incident. Coming across these shared articles and news stories can’t be helped unless you walk around with a paper bag over your head and completely avoid all devices, tv, newspapers and radio! What I would say is, try to resist the urge to seek information out about the potentially traumatic events you deal with in those all important processing days following the incident, particularly when you are off duty and not in ‘work mode’. Your own involvement and role within that incident is more than enough to be processing without added detail which can personalise events further.
- Accumulative effect
I spend many hours in my week talking to police officers and staff about their work lives and it never fails to astound me the amount of exposure the average officer can have to potentially traumatic events in one set of shifts. From sudden deaths to assaults, domestic abuse to firearms incidents, suicide to road traffic collisions. They are of course well trained to deal with these types of incidents, however there is always a danger of overload.
It can take up to three days for the brain to process one traumatic event, therefore exposure to more than one in a few days is pushing anyone’s mental health. If you also take into account any other stresses in life such as relationship issues, financial problems, loss/bereavement, house moves etc. then the capacity for coping with trauma is reduced to begin with so it stands to reason that the build up of life’s stressors and trauma exposure can greatly challenge mental wellbeing, or at least cause a delay in processing trauma effectively on occasion.
There are other factors that can impact trauma processing, such as the support received at the time, particularly from line management. Personal experiences and how you have coped with stress and trauma previously also come into play.
If you have been affected by anything you have dealt with at work and are still suffering in some way, then please do reach out and access some support.
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